Today on the plane from LA to NYC, for possibly the first time in my life I sat next to a legitimately hot woman on a plane (she was in Playboy two years ago...god bless Virgin America airlines). Anyway, she asked me what I was going to NYC for, and because she was hot I broke my "never talk to people on planes" rule and I told her about the movie. As I explained it to her, it dawned on me:
I am in charge of adults. Real, accomplished adults.
Five and a half years ago when I started this, I was alone. I was just some fucking guy in some apartment in Chicago writing emails to his friends about his nights out and putting them on his site. I could be a reckless jackass, because, so what? Nothing I did mattered or affected anyone outside of myself because I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and if I failed, I was the only one who suffered.
But I had a vision of what I wanted. I worked and I worked and I worked, I built my brand story by story, post by post, day by day. Along the way I got a lot of very talented, very important people to help me, people like Nils Parker and The Bunny and everyone else who works with me at Rudius, but all those people were in a similar position to me when they started working with me: Young, unestablished, and with not much to lose.
Before that moment on the plane, I hadn't really stopped and thought about the what it means to be in charge of this movie. It means I am leading adults now. This is no longer just a rag tag group of talented malcontents who have nothing to lose. These are not the rogue early adopters who always believed in me. These are adults with mortgages to pay and established reputations to uphold.
Joseph Middleton is as big as it gets. Bob Gosse is a real director who ran one of the most successful indie film companies ever (The Shooting Gallery). Aaron Ray is a major player with a million other projects he could be working on. Max and Karen are real producers who have several other movies in development. Ben Reder and Susan Kaufmann (our production attorneys) are big lawyers who turn away tons of work from big filmmakers because they are in such demand. Darren Demetre (the line producer) is very experienced and quit another movie to come work on this.
All of these people are older than me and more accomplished than me, and they have chosen to invest the most valuable resources they have--their time and their reputations--on my art and the script that Nils and I wrote, and ultimately, on me as a person. They are adults, and they have something to lose, and they are willing to follow me. I didn't fully comprehend what this meant until I said it out loud to a hot girl I was hitting on.
One of the great things about sports is that big moments aren't hidden. You know when it's a big game. You know when a possession or an at bat is crucial. Life doesn't always work like that. Sometimes, you don't know the big moments until they have passed, but I think I may have caught one as it's going on.
I have passed a major threshold. I am not an amateur anymore. I am not just some angry upstart with a blog no one reads or a marginal crazy dreaming the impossible dream anymore. Adults are now relying on me. They have seen my track record, studied my actions, read my script, met me and looked into my eyes and decided to believe in me and my vision and invest themselves in this project, putting their name and their resources on the line and at my disposal.
Don't get me wrong, all these adults who are working on the movie are doing it because they think it benefits them (as they should, this is not a charity), but the point is that they all have countless other options. Yes, they need to work on A movie, but not necessarily MY movie.
This means I can't be the selfish, self-contained, me-against-the-world, fuck-you-if-you-can't-take-a-joke Tucker I have always been. That attitude was great and necessary when it literally was just me, when no one believed in me and no one thought I would succeed and I had to find the strength to keep going in the face of impossible odds. That attitude--plus hard work--is what helped me beat those odds and is what got me to where I am...but it won't take me from where I am to where I want to be.
If I want to get there, I have to work with adults, and to do that, I have to be a leader and put the people who are working with me before me. Make no mistake, NOTHING comes before the ultimate goal of getting the movie right. But to get the movie right, I have to be the leader and the person that these adults think I can be. Namely, this means I have to be an adult.
Perfect example: Last week during casting, there was a mix up and some kid came in unprepared and wrong for the role he was reading for, and he fucked up bad. It wasn't his fault at all, but nonetheless, it was a disaster. The adult thing to do is just handle it with grace, thank him, and move on. I didn't. I blew up a little and mocked him in the room. It was 100% the wrong thing to do. I have no excuse or justification. Had it just been me there, it would only have affected me. But it wasn't. My behavior affects everyone on the movie. By working with me, if I do something wrong, it's not just me who looks bad--Joseph looks bad because he has lent his credibility to me, and Max looks bad because she vouched for me to Joseph. I can't do that type of shit anymore. That's not what an adult does.
Seriously though--How fucking ironic is it that in order to get a movie about a drunken, selfish narcissist made correctly, the narcissist himself has to become emotionally mature?
Only in Hollywood.
NOTE: This might all be very obvious to everyone else, but remember, I am a narcissist, so with all the time I spend focused on myself, sometimes I miss the obvious things. Thinking about other people is not my strong suit, so shit like this is new to me.
ANOTHER NOTE: Sorry about my last few posts being very philosophical in nature and not grounded in the actual nuts and bolts production. I will get back to doing more pragmatic posts about making a movie I promise, but we've had a few days of down time so I had a moment to reflect on the larger issues. There is at least a year left on the life of this blog, by the time it's done, I will have covered a lot of ground, both practical and abstract.
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